e comfortable to think that things
are going on very smoothly and well. Even though all is not just as we
might choose to have it, yet we like to think that it will turn out well.
There is a sort of optimism that is very popular. Things will all come out
right somehow, we like to think. But the fact is that things don't turn
out right of themselves. They have to be turned by somebody who gives
heart and life to the turning.

It can be said with sane, sober sense that without doubt there is an
emergency, and a great one, in this foreign-mission enterprise. It is, of
course, true that in a sense there is <i>a continual emergency</i> here. There
are thousands of these foreign brothers of ours slipping the tether of
life daily. The light might easily have been taken to them, and have
changed their choices. But then it hasn't been, and the dark shadow of the
possibility of their separating themselves forever from God, through wrong
choice persisted in, hangs down over each one of them. There can be no
darker shadow except the actual knowledge that they have so separated
themselves from life in Him.

<u>A Crisis of Neglect and Success.</u>

But quite distinct from that, and in addition to it, it is quite safe to
say that there is <i>an emergency now on</i> in the heathen world such as it
has never known before. Such is the mature judgment of our missionary
leaders.

And we do well to remind ourselves that we have some remarkable men among
these leaders. There are men on the foreign fields and at the missionary
helm at home of most remarkable ability and genius. There are to-day men
of statesmanlike grasp and power, who could easily have taken front rank
in public life, in diplomacy, and professional life, men fully able to
fill the Presidential chair and do it masterfully, who are giving their
life-blood to this great missionary task.

The sober judgment of these men, taken from every angle of vision, is that
the present is a time of unparalleled emergency. It exists peculiarly in
Asia, the greatest of all foreign-mission lands. It has been caused by a
number of things that now come together with such force as to make a
crisis, <i>the</i> crisis of missions, the gravest that has yet come, and that,
it is probably safe to say, will ever come. For the future will be largely
settled, one way or the other, within a few years.

At the basis of all is <i>the great need</i>, of course. That looms big and
gaunt and spectr